


The Questing Beast

by Wind_Ryder



Series: Methuselah's Children [4]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Animal Death, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, First Person POV: Yusuf, Grieving, Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mourning, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 10:21:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25469215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wind_Ryder/pseuds/Wind_Ryder
Summary: Four years after Lykon's death, Quynh announces that she wants to go on a hunt with just Yusuf. They leave their lovers behind in order to find a monster that haunted Lykon's nightmares as a child.The journey is not quite what they expected it to be.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Quynh | Noriko/Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Lykon
Series: Methuselah's Children [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1839811
Comments: 26
Kudos: 340





	The Questing Beast

Nicolo is playing his lute, strumming an old tune from when he was a child, when Quynh announces that she would like to go on a hunt. I’m half asleep by then, lulled by my beloved’s strumming. But when she speaks, it startles me back into wakefulness. I snort as the air catches poorly in my nose, but I recover quickly and sit up. Bracing on my forearms, I turn toward her. She is sitting close to the fire, her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her lips are tugged down in a tight frown. She seems deep in thought, more than he would have expected all things considered. A hunt is not so strange for us, we hunt daily for our meals. 

“All right, anything in particular you wish to eat?” I ask. Andromache has barely shifted from where she lay in a near doze at Quynh’s side. She doesn’t seem bothered. Nor has she opened her eyes. Nicolo’s strumming continues on, filling the awkward silences with tender notes. 

“I wish to go on a hunt with  _ you,  _ Yusuf.” At this, she directs her gaze to me directly. I feel I’m missing something here. She seems too intense. Too focused. 

“That’s fine, I enjoy hunting with you Quynh,” I tell her, in case she was not aware already. 

Frustration mars her pretty features. “The beast I wish to hunt cannot be hunted in these woods. We would need to travel. It will take time.” 

Finally, Andromache opens her eyes. Nicolo’s fingers have frozen on the strings. Out of the corner of my eyes, I can see how Nicolo’s lips are reforming Quynh’s request. Silently mouthing the words as if it would help him understand them any better. 

It has been four years since Lykon died. None of us have separated from each other’s side once in all that time. Perhaps more importantly, I have not left Nicolo. Not since I’d gone to war with the christians at Jerusalem and left him to starve in the woods by himself. Not since I’d left him to despair and tip onto the edge of madness. Not since I’d abandoned him to sleep away his eternity when he became desperate enough to forget he was alive. 

“Andromache will stay with Nicolo,” Quynh decides for us. “I wish only to travel with you.” 

“What are we hunting?” I ask carefully, biding my time as I try to decide if it’s worth it or not. 

She uses a word then, that doesn’t translate well. I recognize it from one of her language lessons, but it isn’t something that I’m wholly familiar with. I run through thousands of words, learned from eight different tongues. None of them quite match up to what she’s said. The closest approximation is “monster.” She wants to hunt a monster. 

Decision made, I turn poignantly toward Nicolo. I do not care if she is displeased by my deferment. This is not my choice alone to make. Nicolo’s fingers are tight on the lute, but he seems to be considering it just as I had. He isn’t looking at me at all, in fact. Rather, he’s looking at Andromache. What a tableau we must make, each looking to someone else for guidance. However, this line is not straight. It bends and curls back in on itself. Andromache looks at Quynh whose intentions have been clear from the start. When Andromache nods at Nicolo, the answer is given, and passed on to me.

“All right,” I say. “I will hunt your...monster...with you.” Nicolo sets his lute to the side. The rest of the evening is spent planning and making decisions. While Quynh and I are gone, Nicolo and Andromache will go to Venice. At the end of the hunt, we will find them there. It’s for the best. It is too difficult to find one another when everyone is moving in different directions. 

We sleep, holding our beloveds’ close. And in the morning, I gather my things for the hunt. I kiss Nicolo. Tenderly, firmly, possessively. “You are loved,” I tell him. “More than the air I breathe, you are loved.” I press my hand to Nicolo’s sternum. “I leave you, but I leave my heart in your care. It will not beat in my chest for you have it here in yours instead.” After two hundred years, it still thrills me to see him blush at my words alone. 

He kisses me, and I can still feel the heat on his cheeks from where I’d enthused his soul. When he finally pulls away, he pushes me ever so slightly. “The sooner you go, the sooner you come back,” he says, and his cheeks are still red. His tongue still licks his lips to remember my taste. 

“All right.” I grant him a reprieve, and hug Andromache before mounting my horse. Quynh is already settled on hers, watching our farewells with a cool expression incongruous with the pain I know she must feel at being parted from her beloved too. 

Still, she wishes to hunt a monster, and so we will hunt a monster. We ride out at dawn. She guides us south. The familiar Libyan terrain turns rough and hot as the day progresses. We ride for hours with little conversation between us. She consults nothing. Not the angle of the sun, nor the landscape. She seems interested only in going south and south alone, with no care for premade roads or trade routes. 

Our water skeins empty after the first few hours in the heat, and I whistle to catch her attention when I see signs for a water source we can use. She hesitates for a long while before turning her horse toward the well. The sun is high above us, and my skin flakes and chafes in the heat. “We should rest,” I tell her. She isn’t pleased, but she doesn’t argue. She nods curtly and helps me set up a cloth shade for us to sit under as the sun reaches its zenith. 

There, her impatience seems only to grow. She fidgets constantly. Her fingers desperate for something to do. She sheaths and unsheaths her sword. She checks her arrow heads and runs her hands over her bow. “Why are we here?” I ask her. 

“To hunt a monster,” she replies curtly. 

“No, why are we  _ really  _ here? You and I? Why me?” 

“Andromache does not care to hunt what she cannot eat. What she cannot honor. I do not wish to eat the monster, I wish only to kill it.” It strikes me as wasteful, but I do not feel the stinging displeasure Andromache would have. I nod slowly, accepting the response on the surface even as I rally a rebuttal. 

“But why me?” 

She barks a laugh, scoffing in incredulity. “Nicolo is as soft as Andromache.” 

“Softer, perhaps,” I concede. 

“I would not leave Andromache alone. Between the two of you, you are more likely to be of help.” 

“Quynh.” She scowls at me, knowing her deflections have been for naught. “Why did you not hunt the monster on your own?” 

“If you don’t wish to be here, then return to your precious Nicolo—”

“—I did not say that. Do not use him like that. I am here, and I am pleased to be here. But tell me truly, why did you wish for me to be here, like this?” 

Anger contorts her face. She snarls at me, vicious and hateful. She stands, knocking the shade to the side in her frustration. The blazing heat from the sun is near blinding as she bats the cloth this way and that, folding it back into submission. I take it that our rest has ceased and it is time to keep moving. The horses, heavy with drinking water from the well, are not pleased with our intentions. “I wanted you alone for one day, is that too much to ask?” she hisses, glowering as she packs her horse with our materials. 

It is not one day she has asked for. This hunt, however long it takes, will certainly last more than a day and she knows it same as I. “It is not too much to ask,” I say anyway. I mount my horse, sighing as my legs complain. “What are we hunting?” She seems ready to tell me it is a monster once more, but I cut her off. “What does it look like?” 

Her fingers are tight against the reins. Her horse grunts unhappily. She does not soothe it. She says, “Lykon told me of it. Once.” Nudging her horse forward, she continues riding south. “I heard of it again while in town. It has the head and neck of a snake, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and the feet of a hart. It is said to live in the savannah past the desert.” 

It sounds remarkable. I try to imagine it, this monster she has described. Its neck and its spots, its great legs but misshapen feet. “Lykon saw it?” he confirms, mystified by the possibilities. It would be a great hunt, if they did manage it. He is almost sorry that Nicolo isn’t there to see the monster too. It would have fit well into his bestiary of creatures that he sketches occasionally on the margins of papers they collect. A habit from the monastery, he always said. 

“He said it was the most remarkable creature he’d ever seen.”

“And you wish to kill it,” I do not mean it as a question. She does not take it as one. She glares at me, her eyes fierce and hateful. For years she has been filled with hate. For years she has been quick to anger and quicker still to annoy. She finds little pleasure in waking in the morning, nor relaxation in the evening. 

“I wish to kill this monster, yes.” The confirmation is hardly needed, but it ends the conversation. She kicks her horse, riding ahead. I follow. There is little I can do but follow. She may hate, and hate endlessly, but I love her. I will not let her face her monsters alone. 

The desert heat burns our skin. Andromache told us once that she first met Quynh in the desert. It never occurred to me to ask which desert. Likely, it was the Gobi. I spend hours wondering if the Gobi is similar to Al-Ṣaḥrāʾor if it has its own challenges. I think to ask her of it a few times, but Quynh’s mood has not improved. She grips her reins so tight, her horse has begun to jerk its head and kick its feet in irritation. She corrects it with great skill, but her hand does not release its grip. She is firm in her seat. 

Patting my horse’s neck, I hum a few lines of a song I’d picked up in Berenice. My horse’s ears flick back to listen and I hum a touch louder if only to annoy my companion. She does not outwardly react, though she does move further ahead. I do not mind this. We have a long journey across the desert. Let her play the isolationist. Eventually we will talk again. 

I play games in my head. I think of Nicolo and Andromache. I imagine what they must be doing. They won’t have reached Venice yet, perhaps they never even left Berenice. Perhaps they’ve decided to take some time to find the right vessel. If they’re still home, Nicolo will be playing with the children or helping the fishermen bring in their hauls. Or maybe he’s collecting some of my things from the forge that I would like to keep. I hadn’t thought much of the forge when I left, but Nicolo wouldn’t just abandon it. He’ll handle the details. 

Andromache had not quite settled in Berenice like Nicolo and I had. She had not intended to stay stationary for so long, but Lykon’s tragedy had stifled her intuition on where to go next. Who to fight next. She said she would stay as long as we wanted to stay, in our hand-built home in a city that was quiet and calm. We wanted to stay for a while, and so we had. But Andromache flitted about. She did not make friends with our neighbors. She avoided conversation with the caliphate’s men. She went to the wilds and hunted, returning in silence. I cannot imagine her actions as I can imagine Nicolo’s. I hope if she is hunting, though, that he goes with her. It is amusing to imagine them hunting something familiar as we face the monsters of Lykon’s history. 

I think on it until nightfall. Then, Quynh acquiesces and allows the horses to rest. We find an oasis that will suit our needs. We latch the horses and let them drink. We fill our skeins and do a cursory look for scorpions or snakes. A few beetles scamper here or there, but I am unconcerned with them. I settle down on the cooling sands and look up to the sky, tracking the constellations as they rise. 

“Do you know where to find the beast?” I ask once I’ve spotted at least twelve figures.

“The savannah, past the desert.” She says it as if I’m meant to know precisely what that means. I do, and there is nothing precise about it. 

“The savannah is a big place.” 

“It’s a big animal.” 

“If it is  _ that  _ big, I do not think we’ll be able to kill it just the two of us,” I tease. Something hits the sand by my head. I turn to look. She’s tossed a beetle at me. Its pincers snip toward my face and a horrible noise squeals past my lips as I roll over. Curses form on my tongue. I take my dagger and stab the wretched thing, then look about in case there are any more. She’s laughing at me when I finally face her again. I hold my beetle-pierced blade in her direction. “You are a cruel woman.”

This, she does not deny. She waves her hand at me, flicking her wrist up and down. “Go to sleep Yusuf. We will find the monster soon enough.” 

I do go to sleep, but I sleep poorly. Every few moments I am startled awake, confident I can hear the rustling of beetles. Whenever I look, though, there’s nothing there. The night is still. Quynh sleeps undisturbed all the way through until dawn. 

* * *

We cross the desert in three days. A sandstorm delayed our progress at one point, and we hunkered down beneath our blind. We pet our horses through their panic, covering their eyes and noses with our clothes until the worst of the storm had ended. By the time we reached the grasslands, my mouth feels like it will never again feel right. Sand has coated my teeth and lips. My tongue is a dry wasteland incapable of taste. I gorge myself on water at the first hole we pass. Quynh dares to caution my progress, and I ignore her. When I puke, it is worth it. There is more water to drink, and I’d rather drink myself sick than not drink at all. 

We spy birds first. Vultures, the first harbingers of civilization, then smaller birds more accustomed to small migrations. The grass grows thick under our feet. The air takes on a sweet odor. My taste returns, grudgingly, and with it comes fruits. Monkeys. The sounds of life overtake the still emptiness of the desert. I am grateful for the reminder that the world spins on past the dullness of white heat and burning sand. 

Quynh’s eyes are constantly on the horizon. She mumbles to herself, too soft for me to hear. She leads us east and west, farther south. We approach a river of sorts and she squints across it to the otherside. “We must go that way,” she declares. 

“I do not think there is a bridge,” I inform dully. Still, we walk along the length of the river until we find signs of animal crossings. There’s a group of large hoofed creatures that I’d never seen before snorting and huffing on one side of the river. They are harts, of a sort. Their backs are massive and hunched, their faces long and almost horse-like, though the neck is obscured by thick fur. They do not quite appear to be lining up, so much as grouping together. They ignore us for the most part, moving about themselves as they prepare to march down the incline leading to the river and then over to the otherside. 

For several minutes we wait, expectantly, but the creatures take their time. Finally, the first one rushes forward. It runs, its legs long enough to stomp through the water. It is of a height with our horses, we should make it across well enough if it can reach the other bank. It does. Then, as if it was the only sign the others needed, the rest follow suit. They jump into the water, rushing hard and fast. They do not quite trample each other, but they seem close enough that it might become a possibility. 

I almost question their tactics, when I see one of the creatures fall. It screeches in pain. Blood splatters through the air. My breath catches in my throat and I feel my jaw drop open as I stare in horror at the creature flailing in desperation in the river. Its fellows have kept on, abandoning it to whatever fate it had. I see something dark moving in the water, then. It throws open massive jaws and snaps shut on another of the animals. These, I knew. 

“Crocodiles?” Quynh’s lips are pressed tight. She scrunches her nose in contemplation. The harts are rushing the river, trying to use their sheer numbers to distract the water demons from capturing them in their jaws. She kicks her horse into movement, and the stupid animal listens. It follows her command, rushing to join the melee. “Quynh no!” It is too late. She’s joined the fray, her horse just another number amidst the stampede. 

Gritting my teeth, I remind myself to apologize to Nicolo later. He will never forgive me if I get eaten by a crocodile. Then, I kick my horse into motion. It snorts and bucks, far more clever than Quynh’s, but I guide its head forward and repeat my command. “We’re crossing,” I tell it. “And if you’re quick, you’ll live.” It seems to take that as its personal saving grace. I’ve never felt this horse move this quickly, but it throws its legs out as if it intends to leap the span of the river in one bound. 

It runs as fast as it can, hurtling in with the rest. I barely can keep track of Quynh, only vaguely aware that she’s making progress in the din. The harts are screeching and screaming. The water is splashing in all directions. Quynh shouts, but it is a shout of victory. She’s made it. We’re half way across and I see jaws moving in the water. Unthinkingly I pull at my scimitar and stab down at it. A wicked noise permeates the air. Blood dyes the water red. My horse gallops through the chaos, reaches the other side, and bucks with unrestrained exuberance once we’ve joined the herd in safety. 

The harts are watching us with dumb expressions, their eyes squinting and uncertain.  _ Why would you do that?  _ They seem to ask, and I have no answer except that my sister is a madwoman fit for confinement. Said sister rushes to our side and she’s whooping in delight. She holds out her hand to clasp mine in victory. I meet it more of instinct than actual excitement. There’s sweat beading down my neck. My heart is trembling in my chest. 

“Nicolo will kill you if you tell him that we did that,” I warn her. 

“A death worth having!” she delights. It’s the happiest she’s been since Lykon’s death. It is almost enough to chase away my fear. But even as she starts talking rapidly, recounting the journey as we steer our brave horses from the river, the fear never quite abates. It stays, ever present, like a headman’s axe, waiting for the chance to fall. 

Yet, stubbornly, onwards we ride. 

We navigate deep into the savannah. We pass herds of harts. We spy lions lounging and hunting in turn. They eye us, but seem disinclined to engage. Unlike the crocodiles, we make no effort to grow close. I keep my hand on my scimitar, mumbling prayers and curses alike as Quynh chases a monster to kill. 

Toward evening, we come across a group of people. Their skin is darker than Lykon’s had been. Their heads are shaved clean. The women wear no coverings over their breasts but all carry spears. Quynh calls out to them. She tries Lykon’s tongue first, but it is met with blank stares. She tries several others, but these too are met with no understanding. Finally, Quynh bows her head at them, and we move away from their party. They do not chase, merely talk amongst themselves. I wonder what we must look like to them. I do not find it in me to care. 

Camp is constructed near a wateringhole. A collection of elephants are resting there and we form an uneasy truce with them in that we do not approach them and they keep their curious young away from us. There are no obvious signs of beetles, but I do not put it past Quynh from playing a game again. 

The evening is peaceful, though. We eat the last of our food and talk about hunting some of the harts we’d seen. Perhaps even the strange maned ones. I wonder what they would taste like. I miss Nicolo’s insight even more. He has a talent for such things, and for combining flavours. I long for his talent now. I long for his familiar weight in my arms. “Do you miss Andromache?” I ask.

“Of course,” Quynh says. “But she could not come.” She eyes me for a moment, before snorting in an absurd manner. “You are too dependent on Nicolo.” 

“I’m not  _ dependent  _ on him.” 

“Oh, Nicolo, I cannot eat without you,” she mocks. “Oh, Nicolo, I cannot sleep without you. Oh, Nicolo, Nicolo, Nicolo. It is pathetic, you realize. ”

Anger starts to build in my chest. I glower at her. “I have never said these things. I do not feel that way.”

“He is all you think about. All you talk about. You cannot open your mouth without his name filling it.” 

“Is it so wrong to think and speak often of the one I love?” 

Quynh’s fingers curl into fists. She snarls. Her face transforms into an expression of pure malice. “Just because I do not speak of them does not mean I do not  _ love  _ them. Her.  _ Them.” _ She climbs to her feet. I do as well. One of the elephants trumpets quietly, a warning that transcends species. They want no disturbance. I don’t know if we can ensure none occurs.

“I never said that either. You are so quick to put words in my mouth.” 

“Then tell me what you meant!” 

“That I love Nicolo and will speak of him as often as I desire, simply because  _ I  _ desire it.” 

The horses’ feet are shifting uncomfortably. They jerk at the loose ropes we’ve tied to them for the evening. Their attention is on the elephants, where it should be. I wait for Quynh to determine her position in our argument, though truly I cannot tell what we’re arguing about. Finally, she glowers at me and returns to the dirt. She lays down, back to me. A dismissal. 

I settle in for the night. Again, I do not sleep. 

I’m exhausted in the morning, but still, we ride. 

* * *

Days pass. We hunt harts for our meals, then leave before scavengers can assault our prey. We collect nuts and fruits; we let the horses graze on the endless leagues of grass. Still, our monster evades us. Quynh and I avoid talking to one another when we can. Her exuberance at the river has been replaced with the far more familiar hateful silence that has haunted us for years. She seems to take all the air from the world and hold it deep within her, letting no one get a full breath so long as she is present. 

Each time I think of Nicolo or our home in Berenice I feel the stabbing shame of her words grinding at my mind.  _ Dependent.  _ I’m not dependent on my love. But oh, how I miss him. And oh, how I wish he were here. If only so I would have someone to talk to beside the horse. 

Eventually, Quynh decides that the monster must drink at some point, and we make a temporary basecamp not far from a watering hole. We will wait for the beast to appear, and I desperately hope it will come if only to end this mad journey she insisted we go on. A dark energy fills me the longer this hunt takes. I find myself grinding my teeth to keep from saying anything to her. Instead, I complain about her to the Nicolo of my imaginings, and he nods sagely and offers advice that I decide I don’t need to listen to because he’s my imagination and not real. 

A week of mindless waiting threatens to send me straight to Venice, leaving her here to chase myths and crocodiles. A week, where Quynh sharpens her arrows and polishes her sword. A week, where she paces and marches about the savannah, searching for something that I doubt exists. A week, and I’m dozing at the base of an acacia tree when I hear hooves. I open my bleary eyes, expecting a hart or perhaps even my own horse come undone from where I’d left it at our camp and wandered over to see what I was doing. Instead, I see only legs. 

Surprise jerks me fully awake. I sit up, and I follow the line of the beast. Its hoof is as long in diameter as one of my feet, but its  _ legs.  _ Its legs go up and up and up. I lean my head back in wonder as the body forms at last in the heavens. Only to be towered over by a long neck that arches even higher. 

I see it all. The hart’s feet, the spots of the leopard, the rump of the lion, the neck of a snake. Yet the neck is not so snakelike as it is just a reaching arm, daring to touch the clouds. I can hardly breathe as I feel the majesty of the creature in the very air. Its mouth embraces the tops of the tree I was resting at. It chews nimbly at the leaves and branches. I think, at the very top of its head, it might have horns. 

Madly, I look for Quynh. “It’s here!” I want to shout, but my voice has left me. So stunned I am by the monster’s presence. Though, monster may not be the right word. It is large, yes, but graceful. It is powerful, certainly, but slender. It eats leaves and not meat, and it shows no outward signs of being a vicious creature. I feel, absurdly, like trying to chase it off. As if it would be threatened by someone like me. I don’t want Quynh to kill it, though. Not just for the thrill of overcoming a foe. It is too magnificent for such a thing. And if it did need to die, too valuable. The meat on this animal could feed a village for a month. To let it rot would be wasteful. The nomads we passed could have far better use of this animal than either Quynh or I. 

It seems, though, my concerns were for naught. As I scan the horizon looking for my sister, I find her standing rather closer than I’d imagined. She must have seen the movement from wherever she’d perched herself, and for whatever reason had allowed the animal to tower over me as I slept. Perhaps it was her form of vengeance. In any case, she is not particularly far, and more importantly: her weapons are still sheathed. Her arrows are still in their quiver. Her bow rests limp and unstrung at her side. 

Carefully, I rise completely. The creature continues eating, dropping the occasional stick on my head. I ignore it and slowly move away from the tree. I trek towards Quynh. She has eyes for the creature alone. “It’s not a monster,” she whispers as I settle at her side. 

“No,” I agree. “It is not a monster.” I wait, uncertain what her decision will actually be in this. We’ve looked for weeks now, and she could launch her attack here. She could throw herself at this magnificent creature and she could kill it if she was determined enough. Instead, she turns her back. She walks, shoulders collapsed forward, toward the horses. 

“I do not kill the innocent on a whim,” she says. And it is so dejected, so despondent, so filled with absolute despair that I wish that animal really was the monster she’d been imagining. I wish that beautiful, majestic, beast, had been every inch the nightmare she’d been chasing. She wanted a fiend that she could kill. Instead, she’s been given a towering giant too fascinating to blemish. 

She drags herself back to our camp, throws herself onto the ground, and sleeps the moment she closes her eyes. I watch over her for an hour, then leave her to hunt for our dinner. The beast has left the tree. I doubt we’ll see it again. 

I cook dinner slowly that night, blowing on the fire and roasting our meat. I collected some fruits while I was out, and I give them to Quynh to nibble on when she rises from her slumber long enough to sit up and seem useful. The disappointment is so thick I can taste it. It’s a physical thing, slathering itself on my tongue and down into my gullet, gripping my organs in an unrelenting grasp. 

I hadn’t even wanted to find the monster toward the end, but now that we’ve seen it I feel more agitated than I had before. I kick at the rocks I pass. I make no effort to be quiet as I adjust my pack or fidget with our roasting hart legs. 

“Why are  _ you  _ so upset?” Quynh asks me at last. 

“If this is what it was always going to be like, we never should have left Berenice,” I say. It is the wrong thing to say. I had forgotten, in my irritation, that I’d been trying to keep Quynh from raging as she’d done before. Now, there is no hoping for it. She lurches to her feet, and I meet her stance. 

“It’s not like I  _ knew _ ,” she hisses. 

“What, Lykon didn’t say his monster was  _ harmless?  _ That it was just another leaf eating giant? How exactly did he describe this  _ monster _ to you?” 

“Do you want me to go kill it? I will! I’ll go kill it!” 

“I don’t want you to kill it! We already decided not to! It just feels like a waste of  _ fucking  _ time.” 

“And staying in Berenice would have been better? Staying there with Andromache moping and Nicolo flitting about - that would have been  _ better?  _ At least we aren’t suffocating in that damn house!” 

“She’s  _ moping  _ because Lykon  _ died _ , how do you expect her to behave?”

“I KNOW HE DIED,” Quynh roars. She throws herself at me. Her fists hit my chest. There are tears in her eyes. She slams her fists down on my body and I catch them in my hands. “I know he died, I was there! I was there when he died!” She tugs her wrists free and steps away. I let her go, foolishly thinking it’d be the end of her tirade, but she pulls her sword free and slashes me across my stomach before I can think to counter it. She always was the fastest of us all. My feet lose their footing and I collapse onto the ground. My breath chokes in my throat. I press a hand to my side and all I feel are my intestines and my blood. Spots flash across my vision. I can barely hear her as she shouts. “He died just like this! Just like this he lay there. His hand on his side and he looked up at me and he said—”

I don’t know what he said. I die before she tells me. 

I wake up, and she’s still talking. Still standing over me with her sword. I gasp as I breathe in. Pain wrecks me, and I groan. I feel the healed over skin where my offal once was. “—and he should have woken up!” Dizzily, I sit up. She swings her sword down again, and I roll to avoid it. It hits the dirt where I once lay. 

“Enough, Quynh,” I say. She screams at me, slashing her sword with a backhanded swing. I barely avoid it in time. “Quynh! Enough!” But it is not enough. She swings again and again and again. I trip over myself in my haste. New life does not inspire great coordination. My legs are fawnish beneath me. I flop and falter. She slices me open just as my hand reaches the hilt of my blade. I die choking on blood and feeling my guts leave my stomach. 

I wake with my fingers already tight on my scimitar and a rage that has been building for weeks. Throwing all my energy into standing and turning I lunge at my sister. I slash at her, cutting one hand off and imbedding my scimitar deep into her body. She gurgles and falls, unable to block or even defend. She dies in a heap. I hold her hand back to her wrist and wait for her to heal. Her sword, meanwhile, has been safely relocated far from her grasp. 

When she wakes, she stands. I let her. I let her stand and I give her room. I ask, as calmly as I can manage. “Why are you doing this?” 

Finally,  _ finally,  _ the floodgate breaks. “Why?” she asks. “ _ Why?  _ Is that all you can ask me, is  _ Why?  _ Why do you  _ think _ I’m doing this? Why do you  _ think  _ I feel this way? You ignorant  _ swine.  _ Is it not obvious I’m angry? Is it not clear that I’m upset? And yet you ask  _ why?  _ Why hunt, why leave, why rage, how can you not know? How can you not be aware of how I feel? You’ve known me for over two hundred years Yusuf, how can you not  _ know _ ?”

It isn’t enough to know. It isn’t enough to understand. I hold out my hands. There is no weapon here. I say, “Tell me. Tell me how you feel” 

And she answers, “I’m  _ angry!  _ I’m fucking  _ angry!  _ I’m angry and it isn’t fair! It isn’t fair that I’m still here and Lykon is gone. It isn’t fair that I wake in the morning and there you are with your Nicolo. Wrapped in each other’s arms, you have the man you love and I do not. And I wish I could just take you for a moment. I wish I could give you just a fraction of the pain that I’m feeling. My heart burns with hatred for you, and yet the idea of you feeling that fraction of pain is enough to make me recoil in  _ shame.  _ I hate you. I hate you and I love you, and I hate that he’s gone, and it’s not fair. It’s not  _ fair.  _

“Andromache grieves in silence. She says nothing. She does nothing. She sits and sits and sits. And I want to kill something. I want to kill everyone on this planet. I want to hunt down the monsters that terrorized our nightmares and I want to burn them all to the ground. But Lykon’s murderers are  _ dead  _ and I can do nothing to them. It doesn’t fix anything! It doesn’t fix how I feel. It doesn’t bring him back. Nothing can bring him back. Why give him to me only to take him away? 

“Why give us  _ you  _ when you want to live a life separate from us? I loved you both as my brothers, my family. I loved Nicolo’s sweetness and your fire. I loved you like I’ve never loved my own family, but you  _ left!  _ You left, and then Lykon left, and when he came back he  _ died!  _ And I  _ hate you for it.  _ I hate you for it, because he died when he came back to us. He died after leaving, and that’s why Andromache doesn’t want to separate again. Because of you and Nicolo, but you won’t get out of that damn house. You won’t leave, and I hate it there. I hate it there and I hate everything about that place. Lykon went there and then he died and that’s  _ your fault.  _

“But then—then I—I  _ hate  _ that it hurts to not love you, and I hate that I want to love you like I used to. I want to love you like I still do. I hate that Nicolo can have you, but you don’t want me. You only want him. You only want to be with him. And you don’t want me like Lykon wanted me, but I miss his  _ body.  _ I miss his voice in my ear and his arms around mine. I miss lovemaking and rejoicing with him. I miss dreaming of his child quickening in my womb. I have no child, and I never  _ will  _ have a child, but I hate that I will never have  _ his  _ child. 

“And sometimes, you look like him. Sometimes you look like him and I  _ want  _ you to be him. I want you to stop looking at Nicolo and to look at me, and to be with me, and to not leave me. And I hate myself for wanting that. Nicolo is  _ yours  _ but I want something to be mine, and so I’m  _ angry!  _ I’m  _ angry Yusuf.  _ Am I not allowed to be angry?” 

“You are,” I tell her. My arms are still wide, I motion with my hands. Tears sting my eyes. She blurs before me as they well up. They drip down my face and I cry openly. “You are,” I repeat. Finally, she comes to me. She lets herself be held in my embrace. She wraps her arms around my back and we hold each other as we cry for all that we’ve lost. 

Lykon should be here. He should be here with his quick smiles and his easy laugh. He should be here with the honor and reverence that he always gave Quynh. He should be here to take her hand and whisper promises into her skin. He should be here, and he’s not. He’s somewhere far away, somewhere we cannot reach him. He died the long death, and we are all that’s left of him. 

I guide her back, confident in my decision. I cup the back of Quynh’s head, letting my fingers slide through her hair. We kiss. Her lips are chapped against mine. Her hair too long and tangled. We kiss, and I know the moment she knows that it will not help. She pulls back, accepting my flaws as much as I’ve always accepted hers. “Did it help?” I ask anyway. 

“No,” she says. “No, no, no.” I hug her even closer and rock her as we weep. I am not Lykon. I cannot be Lykon. And she will never be mine. Our knees collapse beneath us and we cry. We cry and cry and cry. I stroke her hair and she sobs great heaping gasps of air against my throat. I rock her gently. I whisper sweet words into her ear. I wonder if Quynh’s heart could have been settled with a kiss, what kind of future that would have entailed. 

I knew that it wouldn’t help her. I knew it wasn’t really what she wanted. She wanted a phantom who no longer lived. No beating heart could soothe her desire. And yet. I wonder anyway what would have happened if it had helped her. And I wonder if there really is no way to ease her heart. She had her love for thousands of years, and now...now he is gone. Andromache remains, but she is only one piece of a triad that was meant to remain whole for all time. 

She hates that I have my bliss with Nicolo. I hate that I cannot give her hers back. 

“When Lykon told me about the monster...he said he saw it only once as a boy.” She sniffs loudly, wiping at her eyes. “There was a dog, and he fed it sometimes. And the monster, that...that animal, it didn’t like the dog, I suppose. It trampled it to death. It ran it down and kicked it over and over until it died. Lykon ran away and he never looked back. He said it was the most terrifying creature he’d ever seen. I...I wanted to kill it because...because I thought it meant I could have helped him. I could do something. Even though he’s gone, I got revenge. I  _ did  _ something.”

“You killed the men who killed him,” I remind her gently. 

“It wasn’t enough. It never feels like it will be enough.” I shift my grip, tucking her head beneath my chin. 

“I know….I know…” 

“I shouldn’t have killed you like that. If you’d died…”

“You will take care of Nicolo for me,” I whisper. She wipes harder at her eyes, trying to catch a new flush of tears as they fell. “Yes? You’ll make sure he’s all right. You’ll keep him safe.” 

“Of course. Of course.” 

“And...and if anything happened to you, we’d do the same for Andromache. You know that, right? We’ll keep her safe. Just like she’d expect us to keep you safe if she died. We’re family, Quynh. It’s what we do.”

“He’d hate me for taking you from him.” 

“Yes. But you promised me to protect him, so now you cannot renege.” I grin against her hair. “You’ll need to face his wrath.” 

She laughs. It’s a good sound. It soothes my heart and I hold her tighter. “For all his sweetness, he’s the most brutal of us when he wishes to be.” 

“That’s the christian in him,” I reveal. “They never know when to stop. When enough is enough. They just fight and fight and fight, and then they feel guilty about it afterwards.”

It’s so good to hear her laugh. To feel her smile against my neck. I could tease Nicolo forever if it meant keeping Quynh happy like this. “You can hate me,” I reveal. “You can hate me as much as you like. For as long as you like. Just...keep living with us. Tell us when you are upset. We’re here for you. And Andromache...I think she’d like to talk to you too. She lost Lykon as well, but you and she...sometimes it looks like you’re losing each other too. Don’t lose her as well as him. Live...live for her, in spite of him. It’s the only thing any of us can do. And I think...I think it would help for you to  _ be  _ with her.”

“I miss her,” Quynh whispers. “But...when I’m with her it feels like there’s just an empty space there. An empty space where he should be. And I...I don’t know how to fill it.” 

“Ah...but avoiding her is not going to fill anything. It’s only going to make the space grow wider.”

She doesn’t get a chance to respond. I feel her chest expand as she inhales to speak. I sense her lips preparing an argument. But in the mild darkness of the evening, a different noise catches my attention. A high pitched sound. Like a laugh, but inhumane and grotesque. Quynh’s body goes rigid in my arms. 

We are covered in blood. The hart I’d killed is roasting horrifically in a fire we ignored. We smell of easy prey and have displaced our weapons in our grief. Very carefully, I release Quynh. I listen as hard as I can. There are paws moving in the grass. “Your sword is just behind your bedroll,” I tell her. My scimitar is only a few paces away. 

I shift to the balls of my feet and in unison we dive for our blades. My fingers just touch the hilt of my weapon as a large hulking body darts forward from the gloom. Savage teeth wrap around my arm and I roll as hard as I can - punching with my other hand and knocking it to the side. Blood wells up anew, flesh tears with the strike. My arm screams in agonizing pain, but it doesn’t stop me. I snatch up my blade and stand. Quynh’s retrieved hers. We’re back to back, and all around us are the massive spotted laughing dogs that scavenge the savannah for food. 

They shriek their giggles from pup to pup as they surround us. Even with our swords aloft, we smell too much like weak prey to be a meal easily passed. I feel my arm stitching itself closed, but the beast that bit me is back on its feet, grinning with my gore on its teeth. It thinks it’s injured me. It charges. 

I step back and swing my scimitar toward its flank. It howls and shrieks as I tear open its flesh. It tumbles then rolls to run to the back of the pack, limping painfully away. My heart hammers in my chest as I feel Quynh eyeing our predators. “This…” she says. “This is a beast worth killing.” 

“It almost sounds like your beast too,” I grumble. “Aside from the feet.” Its long neck is vaguely snakelike, though it has none of the movements of a viper. Instead it moves lithely, its position shifting this way and that as its feet spring from one place to another. 

A new champion tries to take on Quynh. It leaps at her with a howling snarl. She crouches low and impales it on her blade. The others yelp and scatter, putting more space between them and us as they regroup. They stalk around us, circling and circling - barking those high pitched giggles back and forth to one another. 

I ready my stance, waiting for another to pounch. There’s only so much a pack like this will take. But clearly they are interested in more. They attack, two at a time. Quynh and I break formation only to give ourselves room to maneuver. We spin and strike. I step passed one beast and another comes to the fore. I strike and pivot. My blade slings along the sides of the animals and blood splatters the ground beneath us. 

A howling retreat is called before the fourth animal can be harmed in any permanent way. It ducks and limps back to the others. They haven’t fled the scene of their attack. Not fully. Out in darkness I can see their eyes reflecting back, watching and waiting. They know as well as we do that the moment we lower our blades we are vulnerable. They aren’t willing to attack directly, but at some point, we will be weak. 

Quynh laughs louder than all the wild dogs combined. She throws her head back and cheers at our success. Her clothes are torn. Her hair’s a mess. There’s blood on every visible part of her skin, but she’s grinning so bright and clear, I think: finally. She’s  _ alive.  _

Bending down, she opens the jaw of one of the dead animals we slew. She uses her sword and hacks at it, grinning at her butchery. When she finishes, she’s retrieved two of the beast’s largest fangs. She hands me one. “So you will not forget our hunt,” she says, grinning in delight. 

I hold it, still watching the danger in the distance. I tell her, “You defeated a stronger monster than this tonight.” 

“Yes.” She goes to her bedroll and begins to tidy up our camp as I keep my eyes on the threat. They haven’t moved. They’re still watching. Waiting. Lurking. Biding their time to attack. “But when we tell the story to the others, we will tell them of the mighty beasts we killed.  _ That  _ monster…” her eyes flick toward where we once sat tangled and crying, “That monster is a monster I still need to slay.”

“A temporary victory then,” I amend, watching the laughing dogs.

“Yes. But one I intend to make permanent.” She prepares our horses. Still, the dogs don’t move. They’ve conceded the field. We mount, and head north. 

It’s time to go home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Monsters/Animals: 
> 
> The Questing Beast: a giraffe!
> 
> The 'harts' crossing the river: wildebeest - not usually found this far north, but also considering migrations and population changes in seven hundred years I'm willing to be that they used to have a much larger territorial range. 
> 
> the laughing dogs: spotted hyenas


End file.
